PhD Brown University, 1999
M.A. Brown University 1992
BA New York University, 1989

John Marx joined the UC Davis faculty as Associate Professor of English in 2007. Before coming to Davis, he taught at the University of Richmond and Trinity College, CT.

His research focuses on the global adventures of modernist fiction (in English). He is currently at work on a book manuscript with the provisional title Fiction After Liberalism. He is an Associate Editor for the journal Contemporary Literature.


Publication Spotlight

The Modernist Novel and the Decline of Empire. Cambridge University Press, 2005.

In the early twentieth century, subjects of the British Empire ceased to rely on a model of centre and periphery in imagining their world and came instead to view it as an interconnected network of cosmopolitan people and places. English language and literature were promoted as essential components of a commercial, cultural, and linguistic network that spanned the globe. John Marx argues that the early twentieth century was a key moment in the emergence of modern globalization, rather than simply a period of British imperial decline. Modernist fiction was actively engaged in this transformation of society on an international scale. The very stylistic abstraction that seemed to remove modernism from social reality, in fact internationalized the English language. Rather than mapping the decline of Empire, modernist novelists such as Conrad and Woolf celebrated the shared culture of the English language as more important than the waning imperial structures of Britain.

Selected Recent Publications

• "Failed-State Fiction." Contemporary Literature 49.4 (2008).
• “Fiction and State Crisis.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 42.1-2 (2009).
  
• "The Feminization of Globalization.” Cultural Critique 63 (2006).
• "Postcolonial Literature and the Western Literary Canon.” The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004.
• Translated as “Littérature postcoloniale et canon littéraire occidental.” Penser le postcolonial: Une introduction critique. Trans. Marianne Groulez, Christophe Jaquet, and Hélène Quiniou. Paris: Éditions Amsterdam, 2006.